Crossing Thesholds and Passages in Shakuhachi Practice with Kiku Day

This second episode of a two-part series with Kiku Day explores shakuhachi soundings of cultural translation and peacebuilding. With the famous honkyoku piece, Tamuke, we encounter the problems of cultural translation and how a piece about passages has been problematically recast as a requiem. The episode ends with a discussion of ryu or localized schools and the sounding of the robuki wave during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The Music & Peacebuilding Podcast is hosted by Kevin Shorner-Johnson at Elizabethtown College. Join our professional development network at www.musicpeacebuilding.com - thinking deeply we reclaim space for connection and care. 

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Kiku Day: 0:00

There's something interesting I find with this kind of instrument that has managed to kind of speak to so many people in so many parts of the world. And if we all then think about world peace or community, the time where we do this together, you know I'm hoping that will create a little bit more of empathy maybe

Kevin Shorner-Johnson: 0:29

you are listening to season three of the music and peacebuilding podcast, a professional development network at music peacebuilding.com, exploring intersections of peacebuilding, sacredness, community, creativity and imagination. Through research and story. We return to the second part of our conversation with Kiku Day where we continue conversations of shakuhachi performance, meditation and moments where the whole universe might be contained in a single sound. Kiko Day is a shakuhachi player and ethnomusicologist. She studied shakuhachi with Akudo Otsuya, one of the foremost performers of jinashi shakuhachi. Day studied performance at Mills College and earned a PhD in ethnomusicology at SOAS, University of London, where she completed research on jinashi shakuhachi construction, and collaborated with five composers to create new repertoire for the instrument. And if we pivot to your recent article on meditation, first I was, I was really astounded by the length of that study of that of that auto ethnography, I think you started in 2004, is what you said in the article or something like that. Oh 2014 Sorry, I took that too far back, but 2014. And, you know, by asking yourself questions afterwards, what I think you came to understand is that there is a place where you reached where you were able to really balance between being, being able to hear the sound and then being aware of what's happening internally, within yourself. I was wondering if you might talk about that journey a little bit. And what you learned from asking questions of yourself, as you're playing shakuhachi as a meditation practice.

Kiku Day: 2:25

I mean, the reason for I embarked on this was that many people, actually, you know, come to shakuhachi, through the meditation practice, especially if it's Zen Buddhism, then they kind of encounter the shakuhachi. And I encounter many people, but especially outside Japan, I have to say, that play shakuhachi as a meditation, and I was just wondering, how do you actually play and meditate? You know, what does it actually mean? And there's a lot of things in in the story of shakuhachi, Zen Buddhism and meditation, that is a bit of a mystery, to me at least. And so if it was a meditation practice, with the aim ???, so one sound become a Buddha. So meaning that you break through into enlightenment through this one sound that should you know, be a representative of the sound of the universe. I didn't answer that question. So, I was just wondering, you know, for example, why aren't there any stories of enlightened shakuhachi people, shakuhachi players. I mean, in various, Zen, Buddhist if we stick with that, documentation and description, you have these

Kevin Shorner-Johnson: 4:05

Day finds meditation as, quote, the great masters. So I was wondering about all this, about the shakuhachi and meditation. So why don't we have like people who were great masters in, in shakuhachi and meditation, for example. ability to be present in a given moment, while being non judgmental, and attentionally aware of the moment. Returning to our earlier language of thresholds, Day notes that a goal of meditation is to blur the boundaries between self and surroundings. Shakuhachi players assume a bodily form that affects one's mind and enters states of flow upon repeated practice. Kiku Day asks about differences between the non judgmental awareness of meditation and the immersive loss of self awareness in flow states. As she explored meditation in her playing, Day writes, quote, I began to work with breathing to transmit the quality of stillness, while experimenting on playing and meditating, I worked with the visualization of a flow entering me from above my head, down into my body, and out through the heart, and through the shakuhachi. This felt like the first step towards meditation and playing, and the visualization of the breath, fitted well with the playing of the shakuhachi.

Kiku Day: 5:58

So I started doing it. And that's also where flow comes into this kind of, when I'm looking into meditation and shakuhachi, because that's the flow state that Csikszentmihalyi talks about that's another flow than the musical flow, right? But the inner kind of sense of flow, where you kind of forget yourself, and you've embodied the music enough to, to play it, even though that you're not any longer maybe reading the score, or very aware of what you're doing. And it's usually very pleasant when it happens like this. But I was just wondering, you know, is this enough is this is really meditation. Because when, as you also mentioned, I do live in a meditation center. And I think meditation is a lot of hard work. It's a lot of meditation time that feels like a waste of time. To be honest, I sit there and nothing happens. And I'm thinking about what shall we have for dinner tonight and these kind of things. And so why is it so hard on your cushion? If it's not that hard on the shakuhachi? So as that kind of led me to try and to really ask these questions. So I use this micro phenomenology interview technique of

Kevin Shorner-Johnson: 7:36

Self elicitation?

Kiku Day: 7:37

Yeah, exactly. So it's a way to kind of get beyond, you know, your habits, your pre reflective memory kind of thing. And it was a very interesting process. And I did very, very, very small steps, I must say, there was some some part of that time where I did this diary thing. I almost gave up on it. I don't have any results, I can write about any time. But it's small, little by little, I found out little things I had, as I also described in the article, I had this ??, almost, you know, how can I actually actively play and at the same time, let go of any attachment to what's happening? You know, you know, should I not care if I was playing out of tune, if I played wrong, or if I stopped playing, How can I actually keep playing if you really should let go of everything. So it's little by little, I found out how I could still, you know, how, where is it that it was closer to the sitting meditation, where, you know, I'm sitting down and meditating. So I am actively doing something. You know, it's, it seems so banal, but it actually took me a really long time to make these kinds of parallels. And also, the activity you do in meditation, you know, you concentrate on your breathing, or you focus on a few things in order to get into the real or the right state. For meditation, it's kind of a pure state so I started being able to do that on shakuhachi too.

Kevin Shorner-Johnson: 9:39

As day engaged in meditation, she remembered Okuda's teachings, that quote, the aim is that one single sound corresponds to the sound of the universe. To succeed in shakuhachi playing is to realize the universe in sound that is quote, "A union of opposites" in crossing thresholds of inside-outside, a meditative approach to the shakuhachi might be this realization of a "union of opposites." If we jump back to that topic that we really didn't open up, which is about how the whole universe is contained within a sound, I remember too that when I was reading a long time ago about Suzuki and about violin teaching, even, that this was the reason why Suzuki focused so much on tone, before children would move on to more advanced pieces, that this idea that the entire universe is contained within a sound and therefore, that's the reason why you wanted to develop the most resonant tone. So could you open up what you understand about the whole universe being contained within a sound?

Kiku Day: 10:54

It's the complexity of the sound, one. And if we still keep with the meditation, you know, that's, this is part of meditation, where you let go of everything. But in order to do that, you have to draw into awareness, basically everything. You know, because how can you let go of it, if you're not aware of it, kind of thing. And that's also why meditation also is about, you know, where are your dark spots, your blind spots and these kinds of things. So in a way, the parallel with the sound is now I can mostly best speaking, speak from the shakuhachi, part of time, and especially what Okuda told me, but the shakuhachi tone is very complex. So he says that it, he actually today prefers to say, represents the whole universe. So there's both, you know, the very beautiful sounds and the ugly sounds and everything in one. In some ways. There's this concept that is very, very used in shakuhachi. That the aim, the type of sound that we aim for, is when the wind accidentally blows across decayed bamboo and makes a sound. Of course, it's, it's a metaphor. But for Okuda and the way he taught this, the sound of the universe was actually quite important. You know, so, in order to make you sound rich, but not all the time, so the timbre differences that you should actually be able to control was quite rich. Otherwise, you couldn't express the whole universe.

Kevin Shorner-Johnson: 13:19

Acts of cultural translation require humility, and new approaches to listening. In a chapter on Tamuke and cultural translation, de writes about how non local languages have recast the complex artistic expressions of passages as a requiem. The piece Tamuke described in literature as sacrifices and offerings to a traveler's guardian deity, and or the Buddha. This is layered side by side with care for the safe passage of the deceased from one life to the next. However, the piece Tamuke has been recast by Western languages as a requiem, problematically limiting the peace to Eurocentric understandings of death, grief and loss. Reclaiming the rooted complexity of Tamuke listen here to an excerpt of Tamuke a generously recorded by Kiku Day for this podcast [music] Let's transition to acts of cultural translation. So if we take your book chapter on Tamuke I think that one of the things that this book chapter points to is the fact that language and practices are always grounded within an ecosystem of meaning that exists in that spot and the problematic things that happen when you suddenly re label that as a requiem. And the the associations that then come from, from being a piece about a passage to being a piece I recommend. So can you talk about this and talk about the, the, the language problems that come when you try to take a piece like that and reinscribe it as a requiem?

Kiku Day: 16:42

So yes, Tamuke is a very interesting piece, apart from being the first piece I learned. For some reason, it wasn't a very popular piece before, there's very, very few recordings of it, like when they started recording Honkyoku. But after a certain shakuhachi player, Yoko ?? played it, especially his teacher ?? also playing it, it kind of took off because it's very melodic. And it may be this whole idea of a piece for passage that became translated as a requiem, and is written on many CD covers and things that it's a requiem when I have a big problem with that, because requiem is a very specific genre, with a very specific form and Tamuke is not a requiem. You know, you can say you can compare it if that's what you want. But I also think that if you look into the Word, Tamuke, Tamuke, was anything, you know, any kind of prayer for any kind of passage, and it was especially used for travel. So on these kind of very standard roads that people traveled or, there are little temples for Tamuke so for people to go in and pray for safe travel. They're also like, very typical boat ride harbors, there will be a little corner for a temple where you could do your Tamuke prayer. So it kind of changes very much the meaning. So, Tamuke, certainly is also, you know, the passage from living to death, because that's certainly also a passage, but it's not the only one. But now it's really become such a funeral piece. it in a way, it's the piece has now a new meaning and new or I wouldn't say it's new, it's but... maybe a narrow meaning, but used a lot. That's. So it has changed meaning. And it has also opened up for the use kind of across the globe. Because life and death exist everywhere.

Kevin Shorner-Johnson: 19:43

But it has changed the way that piece is performed. Like I think you know, that it's made performers play it slower because I think it's a sad Requiem, when in actuality it maybe should be played a little faster. If it's if it's truly a passage piece.

Kiku Day: 19:57

It would have been, I suppose, or Yeah, but as we don't have much recording of it, in that sense, it's, it's hard to but you could speculate that that's certainly there have been some notes added so it kind of also changed the scale a bit, or modality, and, and into a modality where there are other sad songs. So yeah, it's totally become a very sad piece. I overheard Okuda say to his students don't play play too sad, it doesn't have to be that sad.

Kevin Shorner-Johnson: 20:47

we return to our performance of Tamuke by Kiku Day [music]. In an article on place and locality in Fuke style shakuhachi Day looks at a diversity of localized practice through the case of the Nezasa-ha Kinpu Ryu because Fuke sects were directly tied to localized places, this allowed different shakuhachi schools or ryu to develop the Nezasa-ha Kinpu Ryu developed as a unique style that included a packing or pumping breath known as komibuki. Day writes, quote, by connecting and embedding a particular sound with a particular use of the body to create komibuki by players native to Hirosaki a sense of authenticity is constructed that connects to the soil of the place. This quote, collective body technique is a quote, new way of knowing, understanding and relating to the world and perhaps also to oneself.

Kiku Day: 23:01

The shakuhachi as I told you, already, you know has so many guilds and so many different styles of playing. But that's always their, their main groups, and the more kind of powerful groups and the ones that entered the Conservatory, the ones that produce most ethnomusicologists and these kind of things. And, but there are quite a few groups still left, that's soon gonna disappear. Because these styles are looked upon a little bit like, not interesting, it's not so professional, it's not as flashy, it's not it might they might not play like intune to Western equal scale which has become the norm in Japan. So, there is some kind of a power structure there, that I would certainly like to become like, at least a voice of some of these smaller groups, you know, make people discover them, and they they exist, maybe, you know, I can't save them from disappearing, but at least letting them have some attention than I think they deserve. So when I, for example, was the chairperson of the executive committee of the world shakuhachi Festival in 2018. Try to invite as many of these groups as possible, you know, representatives of these in some times rural, but it doesn't even have to be rural but just not the major part of the mainstream shakuhachi world. So in a way, I find that also some kind of peace work, you know, of giving some lesser known people lesser known players a voice.

Kevin Shorner-Johnson: 25:19

I think that that has been a theme that I've noticed I've, I've done an interview with a with a scholar on Korean samul nori, and I've done a interview with with a performer on the Koto. And one of the themes that I notice is that resonance of the Meiji rapid modernization and that, that question is still out there about what does it mean to modernize and then progress? And maybe now as we encounter climate change, is that new question about like, to what extent of progress? And to what extent is it good to modernize and how do you modernize? All those questions are there I think musically that are really important. Absolutely.

Kiku Day: 26:03

And I think I mean, that Japan went through such a rapid I mean, modernization that was also partly a westernization you know, with only teaching western music in, in schools and after a few generations Western music was the most common, you know, musical language of the country. So it is a very interesting place, you know, where, where, when is it actually Japanese music and and what is the musical language of the people? What is important for them and what is it no and, and of course, yeah, the power balance between some of those

Kevin Shorner-Johnson: 26:53

Yeah, who gets to decide, yes, that's, that's that really interesting question in ethnomusicology as well.

Kiku Day: 26:59

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Kevin Shorner-Johnson: 27:03

This podcast and our earlier podcast on Korean samul nori live into modern traditions that are held across vast distances of virtual space. In today's practice of shakuhachi performance, the majority of shakuhachi players reside outside of Japan. As Kiku Day experienced the disconnect of isolations of the start of the COVID pandemic, Day connected shakuhachi players across the world to perform a Robuki wave as a sign that we are all still here, connected, and compassionate. Okay, I think I want to finish with some of the work that I see you doing on YouTube. You do you do wonderful interviews, by the way. And I really enjoyed watching some of your interviews and some of your pieces on YouTube. Thank you. Yeah. But I think our peacebuilding audience would be really interested in the Robuki wave, if I'm saying that right? Yes, yes. And this is a wave that you did at the beginning of the pandemic, when everything felt like chaos. And then it's a wave that you did just recently in the wake of the, of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So could you talk about this wave and, and what it does and how it creates participation and how you've used zoom, then to take it to the next level as far as the wave?

Kiku Day: 28:32

Yes. In the shakuhachi community, and it's especially the international shakuhachi community, I have to say, it's hard to be very equal with the Japanese kind of community, it's a language barrier and things, but it's opening up, but... there have being certain occasions where there have been suggested that everybody plays something like Tamuke at one specific time. For example, at the funeral of ??, she was a professor at Osaka, University of Fine Arts and the first professional shakuhachi researcher. And at her funeral, that was the suggestion so there have been occasions like that, where, you know, people suggested let's play, and what happened, then, will in the beginning of the pandemic was that it felt like we needed something that held us or that could make us feel the community and we are still here, but if we decide on time, there will always be some people who for whom it's disadvantage, because the earth is round. And, and in a way, it also felt very much like the condition we've lived with, I mean, some people are always in disadvantage. So it's actually a colleague of my ??, who said, we need to do a wave. And the moment she said wave, I was like, "Yes, we suggest everybody plays at their own 12 o'clock or something like that." And then it's a wave around the world. And we did, we did this. Can't remember, if we did it every day for quite a long time. And so everybody posted on social media and and there wasn't at that time, there wasn't any particular you know, how long is time you should do it, though. How many times how many minutes or anything but just to participate. And then we started collecting videos. And we made this video of people playing Robuki. Robuki is just one note, the lowest note on the shakuhachi you can play, it's part of the practice, you could say, to play long notes of the lowest note. So in a way it was already inherent in the, in the culture and practice. And also, it's so simple that beginners could join. It wasn't anything complicated. And, and even if you were the best shakuhachi player in the world, it's still a basic training that is good to do. So it was a very good practice to do and, and it did actually do something for the sense of community. The sense of"we all still here" even though we have this very scary unknown thing as especially in the beginning. So it was great. So we yeah, we did kind of the same thing, the beginning of the war in Ukraine, but I prefer to call it for world peace, Robuki for world peace. So what's not only that so that we could also have in our mind so there are lots of other places of war and social unrest and, and discrimination and all these kinds of thing.

Kevin Shorner-Johnson: 32:46

Hello, I am Pierot from France. And I'm Kiku Day from Denmark we were some shakuhachi players wondering how we could play shakuhachi together you know us players around the world in this difficult time of COVID-19. So I made a decision to create a wave of sound only by playing one note what is our tradition? And I immediately thought yes! that's it we create a wave if all of us played around 12 o'clock noon, then this "Ro" sound will go around the world you know as long as we want to. This is a video showing some of the people who participated in that wave Asia Europe North America Oceania A Robuki for world peace appears to live into distant calls of hospitality and offering that come from the best parts of Komuso traditions of shakuhachi performance Drawing Derrida and a community-centered Samba band, Lee Higgins notes, hospitality is the crossing of thresholds. When we release the tight boundaries of us to make space for hospitality, quote,"community becomes a preparation for the incoming of the other, generating a porous, permeable, open ended affirmation." Day speaks of traditions of consolation, and the connection between hospitality and grief, to connect an empathetic universe and sound.

Kiku Day: 35:48

You know, one of the roles that the Comiso had was, of course, to play for people who needed consult consultants or consolation. And I have an acquaintance who, who

Kevin Shorner-Johnson: 36:01

consolation have actually been a Komuso the past decades in Japan, and he told me that people who are going through very hard times, would at times also invite the Komuso in, give him food and make him play and then it kind of created a space where this person could cry, and, and kind of at the same time, be kind to this Komuso so there was some some kind of relief feeling, I think. So perhaps, that this is, of course, a modern kind of situation, but perhaps similar situations have been going on in the past as well. So it's not that the shakuhachi tradition comes directly into world peace kind of thing alone. It has no direct connection. But I think, with the simplicity, and also the fact that the shakuhachi becomes such an international instrument, I mean, you can hardly call it a Japanese instrument anymore. So many people playing in so many people, both in and outside Japan are experimenting with the construction, the playing styles, and all these kinds of things. So it's become quite International. So there's something interesting I find with this kind of instrument that has managed to kind of speak to so many people in so many parts of the world. And if we all then, at least, think about world peace, or community. The time where we do this together. You know, I'm hoping that will create a little bit more of empathy. May we posture our bodies, finding the rhythm, the length of our own breath, and enter the flow of soundings that hold generous space for silence. and absence. May we generate passages to connect, to grieve, to feel to love. We're thresholds open to hospitalities of a universe of here. Special thanks to Kiku Day Takahashi Yuji and Mogens Christensen for permission to use recordings in this podcast. Kiku Day's CD titled "Wild Ways" can be found on streaming services everywhere. Her website is at www.KikuDay.com. This is the music and peacebuilding podcast hosted by Kevin Shorner-Johnson. At Elizabethtown College, we host a master of music education with an emphasis in peacebuilding. thinking deeply we reclaim space for connection and care. Join us at music peace building.com